Before Russian authorities reported his death, Aleksei A. Navalny was sentenced to another term in a special punishment cell in an Arctic prison. This form of incarceration is used to force inmates into subjugation. This was the 27th time that prison authorities had sent Mr. Navalny into a punishment cell. If he were to have served this last term in full, he would have spent a total of 308 days in similar cells. Inmates in such cells are often left cold and hungry, and those conditions could account for reports of Mr. Navalny’s death. Mr. Navalny had continued to post messages on social media by passing notes to his visiting lawyers, and he had described the brutal conditions in punishment cells. Apart from spending time in a frigid, cramped cell, inmates in punishment cells are also limited in their ability to exercise, spending time in a tiny walled courtyard with a roof of prison bars. In his new penal colony in the Arctic, for instance, Mr. Navalny was allowed to go out only in the mornings, while it was still dark and the temperatures were at their lowest point. Mr. Navalny called his confinement to punishment cells a form of torture, though he also joked cavalierly that it was an opportunity for him to meditate. Harsh prison conditions did damage Mr. Navalny’s health. He was first sent to a penal colony in March 2021, just months after being poisoned by a nerve agent that nearly killed him. During his first weeks in the penal colony, Mr. Navalny’s health quickly deteriorated. While imprisoned, Mr. Navalny said that he was not receiving proper medical treatment, and declared a hunger strike to protest it. By the time he stopped it more than three weeks later, he said, he was left like “a skeleton walking, swaying, in…
2024-02-16 14:33:13
Original from www.nytimes.com